Pentameter, in poetry, a line of verse containing five metrical feet. In English verse, in which pentameter has been the predominant metre since the 16th century, the preferred foot is the iamb—i.e., an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one, represented in scansion as ˘ ´.

Geoffrey Chaucer employed iambic pentameter in The Canterbury Tales as early as the 14th century, although without the regularity that is found later in the heroic couplets of John Dryden and Alexander Pope. Most English sonnets have been written in iambic pentameter, as in this example from Shakespeare:

Shakespeare also used pentameter in his blank-verse tragedies.

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the body of written works produced in the English language by inhabitants of the British Isles (including Ireland) from the 7th century to the present day. The major literatures written in English outside the British Isles are treated separately under American literature, Australian literature,...

metrical foot consisting of one short syllable (as in classical verse) or one unstressed syllable (as in English verse) followed by one long or stressed syllable, as in the word ˘be|cause´. Considered by the ancient Greeks to approximate the natural rhythm of speech, iambic...

c. 1342/43 London?, England October 25, 1400 London the outstanding English poet before Shakespeare and “the first finder of our language.” His The Canterbury Tales ranks as one of the greatest poetic works in English. He also contributed importantly in the second half of the 14th...